Bronze Age Shipwrecks in the Mediterranean Sea

The Mediterranean Sea has been a crossroads of human civilization for millennia, and the many shipwrecks that lie on its bottom are a treasure trove of information for archaeologists. These wrecks can tell us about the ships themselves, the cargo they were carrying, the people who built and sailed them, and the trade routes they travelled. We study the methods of construction and trace their cargoes to see the extent of the trading and communications networks both on land and at sea.

The oldest wrecks found in the Mediterranean Sea are from the Bronze Age and we are fortunate to have one, the Dokos wreck, that predates the emergence of the Minoan maritime network. In this series of articles we have shown that the maritime trading networks started off as purely local, short range, coastal voyages and, by the end of the Bronze Age, about 1200 BC, had extended throughout the eastern Mediterranean, Adriatic and Aegean seas.

We also show that products were brought from far afield on the land based trade routes to be re-distributed through the Mediterranean maritime networks and that those routes were well established by the end of the Bronze Age.